"I also wrote, 'Pesto is the Quiche of the Eighties...'"

Mitch: Alright Ed, your best day, what was it, twins in a trapeeze, what?

Ed: No, I don't wanna play.

Mitch: C'mon, we did it...

Ed: I don't feel like it.

Mitch: Uh, okay...

[pause]

Ed: I'm 14 and my mother and father are fighting again...y'know, because she caught him again. Caught him.... This time the girl drove by the house to pick him up. And I finally realized, he wasn't just cheating on my mother, he was cheating us. So I told him, I said, "You're bad to us. We don't love you. I'll take care of my mother and my sister. We don't need you any more." And he made like he was gonna hit me, but I didn't budge. And he turned around and he left. He never bothered us again. Well, I took care of my mother and my sister from that day on. That's my best day.

Phil: What was you're worst day?

Ed: Same day.

---

I heard yesterday morning that Bruno Kirby died and I was a little taken aback by how sad that news made me. He was one of those people that you forget how much you like because he wasn't a leading man and he hasn't been in the public eye so much over the last decade. But I've been thinking all morning about his movies, City Slickers in particular, and remembering what some of those performances meant to me.

These silly comedies matter. Manhattan, When Harry Met Sally, LA Story, High Fidelity...I even find myself very uncoolly thinking about You've Got Mail a lot. But while those comedies focus on love and romance, City Slickers had it's eye on the despair that remains even after you've sort of figured love out. We all dupe ourselves into this notion of needing to be settled and then we freak out when the pains we've taken to eliminate uncertainty leave us feeling hollow. City Slickers is about male mid-life crisis, I suppose a film like The Hours might be considered a feminine one. (Funny that the male crisis is so much more fun. Actually that's not fair, there are probably plenty of good chick midlife crisis comedies out there but I, of course, haven't seen them. Any suggestions?)

What's great about this movie is that unlike a lot of comedies today, City Slickers had a basic premise that could have made for a movie with a few chuckles...urban guys trying to be cowboys...but the screenwriters took the time to make it real. They took the time to understand why these three men in particular would go on this strip, somewhat as a lark, and then find out how much they really needed it. If you start with comedy and end with catharsis, you've got something great. Billy Crystal's iconic, "I'm 39 and I'm saying 'moo cow' in the middle of a river!" is one of those perfect moments that so few mainstream films find. The elation and laughter of that moment is earned because it's a line said by a character made real to the audience, and we feel it with him.

But back to Bruno Kirby. His character is the most surprisingly compelling in the film. The mixture of affable sleaziness and guarded pathos with which he infuses the performance is what makes the earnest revelation quoted above so moving. There are people we know who seem so larger-than-life that we fool ourselves into thinking that they don't have any ideas about who they are, that they don't have a history that means something to them. These three guys had known each other for years, yet they never knew about Ed's relationship with his father. Why? Because that's the sort of thing you don't talk about until you're on horseback driving cattle in New Mexico and you're not sure if you want to have children with your younger, gorgeous wife.

Kirby was always described as quintessential: the quintessential New Yorker, the quintessential straight man, etc. I've always wondered how people who are described in those terms feel about it. I've never wanted to be an archetypal anything. It goes back to that idea of being settled. School children are told to meet their potential, but what if you do? Have you no more potential after that? Bruno Kirby decides at the end of the film to go home and get his wife pregnant. But we don't for a moment think that means he'll never ride a horse again or never again come up with a ridiculous adventure to embark upon with his friends. He is the resolute undone; decisive, yet open to the inconsistencies of life.

Phil: You are a sporting goods salesman!

Ed: Not today.

And what's more, it is his passion to see the cattle drive through to the end, with all of it's uncertainty and danger, that inspires the main protagonist's catharsis. Billy Crystal's character intends to pack it in and go home after all the guides fall by the wayside. It is Bruno Kirby's Ed who keeps them going on the journey, leading to the reclamation of all three characters as "real men."

I was searching for photos of Bruno Kirby to go along with this column and this one in particular struck me. You can't teach joy, but you can trasmit it like a disease. There are people in this world who are meant to be performers, simply because we will them to be...we need them so much. Bruno Kirby had flawless comedic timing, a gift for the awkward and ridiculous, and a surprising intensity...he had a way of adding depth to characters that others would pass off with one note. As an actor he seemed to understand that everything we see is surface; character is created by all of the layers we take for granted. You can't ever know exactly what it is that makes a person who they are; every choice you make with people is a leap of faith. And if it isn't, perhaps you're too settled for your own good.

Bruno Kirby passed away at 57, and it made me very, very sad. I didn't see that coming.

Ed: This guy, Curly, is a true cowboy. One of the last real men. He's untamed. Next to him, we're trained ponies. It'll do us good to be in his world for a while.

Thanks for being in ours for a while, Bruno. God, we give you Kirby. Try not to piss him off.